How the Americanization of cricket has risked its British soul

By Shyam Balasubramanian and Vijay Santhanam, Special to CNN

Updated 1608 GMT (0008 HKT) February 13, 2014

India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Boys play cricket on the banks of the Yamuna river near Taj Mahal. Cricket is India's national sport and for many, an obsession. It's also become a multi-billion dollar industry. Click through these images to learn more.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Indian national team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a cricketing superstar. According to Forbes, he is the highest-paid player in the world, earning $31.5 million in pay and endorsements in 2013.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – When India's batsman Sachin Tendulkar took to the pitch on November 14, for his 200th and final Test match, millions of his fans watched the cricketing legend bid his farewell. One of them made this sand sculpture in his honor.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Tendulkar received the "Bharat Ratna" award, India's highest civilian honor. He is pictured here during the ceremony with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi on February 4, 2014.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary, a fan of Tendulkar, is picturing riding a tram following a cricket match in Kolkata on November 8, 2013. Chowdhury attended more than 300 international matches and is widely recognized for showing up at every home match the Indian team plays, with his entire body painted in the national colors of India.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Tibetan Spiritual Leader The Dalai Lama is also a fan. Here, he greets cricketers ahead of a IPL match between Deccan Chargers and Kings XI Punjab in Dharamsala on May 21, 2011.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Some aspects of the Indian cricket league remain traditional. Here, Pune Warriors cheerleaders dance before the start of a match between the Warriors and Chennai Super Kings.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Other supporters adopt an American look, like these cheerleaders at a match between Deccan Chargers and Kings XI Punjab.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Yuvraj Singh, of the Indian national team, poses with ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy. Singh is one of the sport's highest paid players. The Royal Challengers Bangalore made a successful bid for him at $2.33 million during the IPL players auction.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – India's cricket team are the world champions, after beating Sri Lanka by six wickets in the 2011 final of the Cricket World Cup in 2011. The win spread euphoria across the nation.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Cricket is most popular sport in India, widely played in schools, local parks and even streets. Here, local children play cricket in India Gate Park in Delhi.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – Kevin Pietersen of England was one of the hot properties on this years IPL players auction. The recently sacked England national player was signed by the Delhi Daredevils for $1.5 million.

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India's cricket craze15 photos

Cricket: India's other "religion" – One of his teammates will be Dinesh Karthik, whom the team bought for $2.1 million.

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Cricket: India's other "religion" – The IPL is under pressure over corruption charges. Pictured here are activists demanding the banning of the league.

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Cricket: India's other "religion" – Kolkata Knight Riders players and officials ride on a truck with the IPL tournament trophy during a victory procession to the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on May 29, 2012.

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Story highlights

The Indian Premier League has exploded into a brand estimated to be worth more than $3 billion

The IPL's rise is in part due to its Americanized style -- but has not been without hiccups

To understand how big the league became, one has to go back through history

Now, it is time to reflect whether cricket's soul is now no longer English, but American

"Sehwag, go back to Ranji!" The jingoistic crowd was screaming when the portly batsman Virender Sehwag was dismissed in the game between the Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Daredevils in an Indian Premier League (IPL) semi-final game in 2008.

That Sehwag was one of India's leading players of the decade apparently didn't matter. The spectators were delivering their ultimate insult: Telling him to go back to the staid version of the Indian domestic circuit, the Ranji Trophy.

The crowd IPL attracted was different from the traditional Anglophile test cricket fan. They were raucous, participative and young. They were happy to see legends succeed, and happier to see them fail if they played for rival teams. The fans were united -- and partisan.

Six years after that inaugural edition, the world's top cricket players have once again been put up for sale in the annual IPL auction. The auction is the televised sale of cricket players to IPL franchises through an open bidding process. This year's auction is marked by rule changes which "nudge" teams into buying players from other teams rather than retain existing squads.

Vijay Santhanam

The league has exploded into a brand estimated to be worth more than $3 billion, negotiating huge deals with TV and sponsors and getting the force of India's huge fan base behind it.

Shyam Balasubramanian

The IPL's rapid rise has not been without hiccups. As the auction gets under way a high profile report on match fixing suggests a deep rot in Indian cricket overall and the IPL in particular.

But, as fans debate whether even average players should be paid more than 200 times the average Indian's annual income for less than 20 hours of "real" work, it is worth considering how the IPL became such a force in world sport. To do that, we need to step back more than 160 years.

In 1850, cricket was much bigger than baseball in parts of the United States. Newspapers in New York and Philadelphia reported cricket more often than baseball.

The moment was right for a great England-U.S. cricketing rivalry, but cricket then was run with a more imperial mind-set, and Britain's colonies and dominions such as Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies were more compliant territories to establish the game.

Then AG Spalding, a leading baseball pitcher of the 1870s, spotted the gap in the U.S. market for a people's ball game. He positioned baseball as a "made in America" game. In doing so, he relegated cricket into a colonial relic and launched a sporting empire.

And so, for decades, America snubbed cricket. Then, just a few years ago, the sport started morphing into something distinctly American.

In 2006 Andrew Wildblood, from sports marketing group IMG, and Lalit Modi, a scion of the Godfrey Philips cigarette empire, realized that the game of test cricket had one problem: length. To be precise, five days in the sun. Even the one-day game lasts more than six hours, which is about three times the attention span of young India.

Modi and Wildblood would have known that a shorter game would attract more fans, and began developing a proposal based on this.

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The shorter, Twenty20 structure had already being trialled successfully around the world. Each side would get only twenty overs or 120 legitimate deliveries to play. However the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), the world's biggest cricket "market," resisted the new format.

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Modi, a U.S. college graduate, understood the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball, and applied his insights to the new project. This led to his meteoric rise in Indian cricket in the hierarchy, followed by a fall from grace. But how did he overcome resistance from BCCI?

It was set on its path to success in 2007, when media house Zee Entertainment Enterprises launched a rival Twenty20 league, called the Indian Cricket League. This forced BCCI into the arms of Modi as they tried to compete.

Other factors played also into the IPL's success, including timing. The league was launched just after a rookie Indian team unexpectedly won the World Twenty20 Cup in 2007 in South Africa. The younger generation of fans could relate to this game and to the new stars easily.

Modi's IPL business model was conceived using the proven American sports franchise model. The tactics included copying the NFL Draft with the IPL auction, cheerleaders and plenty of timeouts for advertising. Like the Superbowl, Modi embraced showbiz. Katy Perry performed at one of the opening ceremonies.

To this "Made in America" mix, Modi added Bollywood. For years, cinema and cricket had been the principal forms of escapism for Indians. By having film stars involved in the league either as owners or ambassadors, the IPL was to provide a double dose of escapism at one shot.

In another savvy move, star players were allocated to specific franchises, ensuring they were identifiably "Indian," while international cricketers created a global feel. Franchisee owners were in ferocious competition, leading to a disproportionate investment in players and marketing.

Finally, there was luck. In the inaugural game, New Zealander Brendon McCullum played one of the greatest Twenty20 innings, and the nation was hooked.

The IPL energized cricket in India. It is unabashedly capitalist, has brought a new generation of fans to the game and brought financial windfalls to players. However, like an unregulated banking industry, it is now in a race against its own inability to set and implement ground rules on ethics, codes of conduct and self-discipline.

Whether it will be remembered as cricket's greatest party or its biggest hangover will depend on how fast the administrators can convince fans and media that the games they are watching are clean.

Meanwhile, as the IPL franchises compete in an open market for players this week, it is also time to reflect whether the auction is confirmation that cricket's soul is now no longer English but American.